Fog Bound

Chapter 4

Several days had passed since Laius shared his story with Verri and the two have since

taken time to themselves to recover from their emotional, mental, and physical traumas. In the meantime, it seemed like a good opportunity to get things around the guild cleaned up.

Laius was shirtless on the roof sweating his ass off as he fixed the hole in the ceiling. Meanwhile, Verri pried the boards off the windows and tidied the inside of the guild. He wiped the sweat off his brow and set the hammer down to take a short breather. Now that the fog was gone, the sun was here to stay and Laius was not enjoying it at the moment. He peered through the now much smaller hole in the roof and looked into the guide. "You got all the boards down yet?" He called down to Verri.

Verri looked up to him, carrying a few boards under her arm. "For the most part. If you need more wood I can come up there and bring you some boards." She offered, throwing them onto the pile she had created. "I was thinking of sweeping after we got everything settled with the roof. Then I don't have to worry about dust and leaves getting everywhere." She was enjoying these small pleasures. Cleaning up the guild meant that they could make it their own and that's exactly what they planned to do.

"Good plan." Laius agreed. "I think I've got enough wood up here to finish off the roof so I'll be good. It's hotter than Hell up here though. I can be down in a few minutes to help clean up. I'm nearly done up here." He replied before returning to his work. He finished nailing a couple more boards to the roof and soon enough he was done. He carefully made his way back over to the edge and tossed the extra boards on the ground below and slid down the ladder with a pocket full of nails and a hammer in hand.

He made his way back inside and leaned against the door. "There's already so much more light in here but I can see the layer of dust in the air. It's like the fog all over again." He glanced at the quest board which was overflowing with papers. "Sooner or later we'll need to organize these. We might start actually getting requests from the townspeople again." Laius took it upon himself to start taking down the pages and stacking them on the counter in a neat pile until the quest board was bare.

"You lookin' sweaty." Verri whistled, grabbing onto a rag on her apron and rubbing his forehead for him. She took up a broom and began to sweep out all the dirt and dust that had gathered over the years. "Maybe we'll be able to complete some of them. They'll be a few years late, but it's better than never."

"Well... It has been a few days since we've done something." Laius sifted through the pages. "I suppose we should get rid of the herb quests? There's quite a few of them but the fog won't be an issue anymore." He placed the herb quests on the counter and continued to shuffle through the quests.

"Huh." Laius paused on a particular quest. "This looks familiar." He passed the page over to her. "I remember Bar Keep telling us about the missing Inn Keeper. Didn't he say he went missing a few weeks ago? This quest was posted recently. You know, I think we could benefit from having an Inn Keeper. Get some fresh souls in this town and we might actually get some business around here."

"You're right, if we could get some people coming through we can start making money again! We might even be able to have some people help out." Verri smiled, reading through the description. "We should talk to some of the villagers and find out if he has any habits. Maybe there was a specific part of the forest he would frequent." She passed the paper back to him.

Laius folded the page and stuck it in his pocket. "We still have to go shopping for new clothes. Why don't we talk to Lacy and his wife? You know, the loud guy we met at the bar a few days ago. They seemed like nice people. It's a small town so I'm sure everyone knows everyone. They gotta know something about the Inn Keeper."